Ars Technica is running an interesting article about the Mail application on Windows 8. It's one of the first party Metro applications, and Ars' conclusion is that it's really, really not up to snuff - it can't even compare favourably to the mail application on Windows Phone. The sad thing is, however - this applies to virtually all Metro applications.

I didn't claim that. However, GNUStep does allow to run many MacOS applications on Linux. It is demonstrated by the guy in the talk.

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and WineLib allows you to compile Win32 apps on Linux or Mac, that doens't prove anythings. There are countless Win32 porting toolkits for Linux.. One group in my company is using one called MainWin by MainSoft. The FULL Win32 API on Linux, based on NT source code licensed from microsoft.

"[q]Their code is so messy and heavily platform-dependent, that they can't even sync the code of simple applications like Windows Messenger on different platforms (Windows and MacOS), OneNote (the non-Windows versions of OneNote lack most of the features of the desktop application) or Internet Explorer (IE has always been behind on WP7).

Different teams, even working in different buildings. "

This doesn't justify anything. It works for Apple and it works at Google. Microsoft is just incredibly bad in this regard. [/q] [/q]

Apple ports iTunes to windows using a Carbon porting library that they build for Quicktime. That framework is ultimately implemented in Win32, of course, everything is. None of this has anything to do with a greater vision of portability; they are NOT using Object C or any NextStep frameworks for this.

On the Microsoft side, microsoft also DID use a Win32 porting toolkit, with the API and MFC ported to the Mac. And made the much windows-like Word 6 for the Mac with it They even sold cross a compiler at the time, Visual C++ Macintosh Edition. Then they stopped doing that, because people and Apple asked for apps that felt more native. Apple apps made with Qt also kind of suck compared to somethign developped natively.

Google has used WINE for Picassa, and they use different native code for Chrome. It's really just a rathole, because you're confusing OS APis, GUI frameworks, clones of these frameworks like GNUstep, and other stuff together. there is no cohesive point being made here except that you are not a developer.

"[q]Microsoft is suffering from their own platform-lockin and API unstabilities. It wouldn't have taken them forever otherwise to get NT ported to the mobile platform.